Trump abandoned the carrot and brandished the stick against Putin in the Ukraine negotiations

A week ago I had the distinct feeling that it was Groundhog Day or as the Russians call it, Dien Surka.

Amid US threats to pressure Moscow – by supplying Ukraine with Tomahawk missiles – Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump held a phone conversation. The result: the announcement of a US-Russia summit in Budapest.

Last August, amid threats of further US sanctions against Russia, Putin met with Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff. The result: the announcement of a US-Russia summit in Alaska.

Already seen.

But Groundhog Day seems to be over.

The meeting in Alaska continued with minimal preparation and a poor result.

But the summit in Budapest is cancelled. It barely had time to be “on” to be honest. Now President Trump has canceled it.

“It didn’t feel like we were going to get to where we needed to get,” the US president told reporters.

And that’s not all.

Trump has previously reneged on threats to put more pressure on Russia, preferring carrots to sticks in his dealings with the Kremlin.

He has put away his carrots for now.

Instead, he imposed sanctions on two major Russian oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil.

This is unlikely to get President Putin to reverse the war. But it is a sign of Trump’s frustration with the Kremlin’s reluctance to make any compromises or concessions to end the fighting in Ukraine.

Russians don’t take kindly to chopsticks.

On Thursday, President Putin told reporters that the new US sanctions were a “hostile act” and an attempt to put pressure on Russia.

“But no self-respecting country and no self-respecting people decide anything under pressure.”

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev was less diplomatic.

“The United States is our enemy and its loquacious ‘peacemaker’ has already fully embarked on the path of war with Russia,” he wrote on social networks. “The decisions taken are an act of war against Russia.

Thursday’s morning edition of the Moscow Komsomolets tabloid was a little less dramatic, but clearly unflattering. The newspaper criticized “the capriciousness and fickleness of the main partner (of Russia) in the negotiations.”

So what changed?

Instead of rushing to the top no. 2, as he had done for Summit #1, this time President Trump was a little more cautious.

He had asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio to lay the groundwork for the summit with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to make sure it made sense to stop in Budapest.

It soon became clear that it would not, and that another summit was unlikely to lead to a breakthrough.

Russia is fiercely opposed to Donald Trump’s idea of ​​freezing the current battle lines in Ukraine.

The Kremlin is determined to take control of at least the entire Donbas region in eastern Ukraine. She has seized and occupied a large part of it.

But President Volodymyr Zelensky refuses to cede to Russia those parts of Donbass that Ukraine still controls.

Moscow would welcome a second US-Russia summit.

The first, in Alaska, was a diplomatic and political coup for the Kremlin. The red carpet welcome in Anchorage for President Putin symbolized Russia’s return to the international stage and the West’s failure to isolate Moscow.

Over the past week, Russian state media has been relishing the idea of ​​a summit with President Trump in Europe, but without the European Union at the table. Russian commentators portrayed the proposed meeting in Budapest as a slap in the face to Brussels.

At the same time, few here seemed to believe that even if it did take place, the Budapest summit would produce the result Moscow wanted.

Some Russian newspapers are calling on the Russian army to keep fighting.

“There is no reason for Moscow to agree to a ceasefire,” said a Moscow Komsomol member yesterday.

This does not mean that the Kremlin does not want peace.

That does it. But only on his terms. And at the moment they are unacceptable to Kyiv and, it seems, to Washington.

These terms encompass more than territory. Moscow is pushing to address what it calls the “root causes” of the war in Ukraine: a catch-all phrase by which Russia expands its demands to include a halt to NATO’s eastward expansion.

Moreover, Moscow is believed to retain the goal of forcing Ukraine back into Russia’s orbit.

Is Donald Trump ready to increase the pressure on Russia even more?

Possibly.

But it’s also possible to wake up one morning and find ourselves back on Groundhog Day.

“In the game of tug-of-war with Trump, Russia is leading again,” wrote “Moscow Komsomolets” after the announcement of the summit in Budapest.

“In the weeks leading up to the Budapest meeting, Trump will be pulled in the opposite direction by phone calls and visits from Europe. Then Putin will pull him back to our side again.”